Learning From FanFiction

So this year I made my first expedition into FanFiction, and I’ve loved it. I probably learnt more about writing while working on this FanFiction piece than I have done in the last two years.

If I look at what I learned most then I am looking at history, background, the depth that makes both characters and stories great. Those are things that I feel I lack in my own work. In the FanFiction world I’ve been playing in I’ve found it really easy to write a story because I’ve got an entire world already mapped out. I’ve got characters who I love and know what their motivations are. I know the history that has led the characters to the key points of their lives. I know what their motivations are, what their goals are. I also had in my head where I wanted to take the story and this is me doing that. So that has helped.

This has all shown me that I do need to do a lot more work on my background details. The simple things like character histories is something that I had barely thought about. I’d thought about things like where they’d grown up, and what their family had been like but I hadn’t really appreciated how that affects the characters and their take on the world until this FanFiction piece.

I’m trying to get some of these lessons that I’ve learnt into the planning details of what I’ll be working on in the future. It’s not been as easy as I thought it would be but I’m working on it.

I’ve got to get some work done on this piece of FanFiction and I’ll be looking to get it wrapped and onto the next story in that universe that I’m thinking of starting in the next twelve months.